Safety & Compliance
Certified inspectors, custom structures, one specification
Every PlayWood Plus structure is designed against ASTM F1487, the CPSC handbook and the ADA Standards — and reviewed by people who hold the credential to inspect it.
Designed by certified inspectors
The credential that matters most for custom work is a person, not a product.
Every member of our team is a Certified Playground Safety Inspector. The credential has been held and renewed across our team more than a dozen times over — CPSI requires recertification, so that figure reflects decades of staying current rather than a certificate on a wall.
That matters because a certification lab tests a product in isolation. A CPSI inspects the playground that actually got built, on the site it was built on, with the surfacing that went under it. For custom structures, that is the review that counts.
ASTM F1487, and the honest answer about IPEMA
We design to the specification IPEMA certifies against.
ASTM F1487 is the Standard Consumer Safety Performance Specification for Playground Equipment for Public Use. It governs use zones and fall heights, head and neck entrapment, partial-body entrapment, entanglement and protrusion limits, sharp edges, and the labelling, installation and maintenance information that ships with the equipment. Every PlayWood Plus structure is designed and built to meet it.
IPEMA certification is a third-party validation programme, and its criteria are ASTM's requirements. Many of the components we specify into our designs are IPEMA-certified. Our own structures are not — and the reason is worth stating plainly rather than leaving a reader to wonder.
IPEMA certifies products. It works because a manufacturer submits one catalogue item and sells thousands of identical copies. Almost every PlayWood Plus structure is custom — designed for one site, one budget, one set of age groups. Submitting each unique configuration for individual certification is not economically possible for anyone doing genuinely custom work.
So we hold ourselves to the underlying specification instead, and we put CPSI-certified inspectors on the design. The standard is the same one. What differs is that a lab did not issue a certificate for a structure that exists once.
Accessibility is a count, not a gesture
The 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design set out play area requirements in Section 240 and Chapter 10. They are specific: an accessible route must reach the play area, a minimum number of ground-level play components must sit on that route, and where a structure has elevated components a proportion must be reachable by ramp or transfer system.
We count them at drawing stage. Ground-level components are counted against the requirement, deck heights are set with ADA transitions and transfer stations in mind, and component layout is planned so that a child using a transfer system reaches play, not just elevation.
Deck height does double duty. The same dimension that governs an ADA transition also sets critical fall height, which determines the safety surfacing system underneath. We design both at once, because they cannot be resolved separately.
Three age groups, designed apart
The CPSC Public Playground Safety Handbook (Publication 325) is guidance rather than law, which is precisely why it carries weight — it is the document an inspector, an insurer and an expert witness will all open first. It covers use zones, surfacing, layout, sightlines, maintenance, and the separation of age groups.
We design for three, and we design them apart:
- Infant and toddler
- Preschool, ages 2–5
- School age, ages 5–12
Equipment appropriate to one group is not appropriate to another, and mixing them is one of the most common failures on a public playground.
Safety in the material itself
Nothing harmful where children put their hands
Every structure is built from timber treated with MicroPro® MCA, which contains no arsenic.
Handrails sized to be held
The handrail's upper surface is engineered as part of the fall-height strategy. Its corners are rounded and the nominal three-inch top has a flat contact area of only 1⅞ inches — narrower than the two-inch-square surface test used by ASTM F1487 when evaluating a designated play surface. The profile keeps the handrail from becoming the structure's highest designated play surface, allowing the deck below to remain the reference point for critical fall height.
Note: fall-height determination depends on the entire equipment configuration, not the rail profile alone. The 1⅞-inch dimension is intended to keep the handrail from qualifying as a designated play surface under the two-inch-square surface test described in ASTM F1487 and the CPSC Public Playground Safety Handbook, but compliance is subject to evaluation of the complete installed play structure.
Where our responsibility runs
PlayWood Plus is the equipment. PlayVentures Inc. manufactures it. Designed for Fun manages the project.
Where Designed for Fun manages the safety surfacing, we take responsibility for the surfacing system's compliance too — with the ADA, ASTM and CPSC requirements that apply to it. An accessible route is only accessible if the surface under it performs, and a critical fall height rating means nothing unless the system installed beneath the deck actually delivers it.
Standards are a floor, not a design
A structure can satisfy every clause of F1487 and still be a poor playground. Nothing in the specification tells you where the tallest deck should sit relative to the afternoon sun, how sightlines work for a parent on a bench, or which age groups will actually share a space at three o'clock on a Tuesday.
That comes from having built these before.
Safety during construction
Building safely on sites that are still in use
Playgrounds are rarely built on empty land. They go into occupied school campuses during term time, into parks that stay open, and onto Manhattan rooftops where a crane pick has to be scheduled around a working building.
Site safety on our projects is directed by New York City Department of Buildings certified Site Safety Coordinators. It is a licensed New York City credential requiring OSHA 30-hour training, the DOB site safety coursework and documented field experience.
It is the reason we can take on work that many playground manufacturers cannot bid: rooftop installations in New York City, jobs on active campuses, and sites where a general contractor requires site safety documentation before anyone is permitted through the gate.
- ASTM F1487
- the specification we design and build to
- CPSC
- Public Playground Safety Handbook
- ADA
- 2010 Standards for Accessible Design
- IPEMA
- components we specify are IPEMA-certified
- NRPA
- member, National Recreation and Park Association
- ASLA
- member, American Society of Landscape Architects
- MicroPro®
- the treatment specified, and its own certifications
- NYC DOB
- certified Site Safety Coordinators on staff